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December 30, 2010

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IWU - Lexington - Africa - Oxford . . .

Please slow it down, there's a secret magic password

that you only notice when you're looking back at it

- Rocky Votolato (White Daisy Passing)

Pictures of Summer

Looking forward to July. . .

Happy Fourth!

~ Angela

Stranger Passing

While I'll continue to post the occasional meandering/life update on this blog with Angela, I've been posting literature/media responses on a separate blog. It will bore most people, but if you're interested in what I'm reading/watching/listening to, you can check it out. So far it's only been poetry and poetry criticism, but the last thing I read was Raymond Carver's collection of short stories, Cathedral, so I wrote a few thoughts about that. I also have a few movie and non-fiction reviews I'm working on getting published elsewhere, but if they don't pan out in a while, I'll put those up as well. The link to the blog (Stranger Passing) is on the blogroll to the right.

It's been a good summer for reading. I just recently graduated with my MA in creative writing (A poetry focus), and I was worried I'd be burned out after ploughing through my reading list. But, I actually feel liberated, and have finished a number of books. I decided to take a break from writing until June (I finished in May), so now that June's here, I'm working on a long poem based on my experiences at the farmer's market I'm working at this summer, and I'm playing with incorporating song lyrics from Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. How do they relate? Not sure. Sound boring? It probably will be.

That's that. I'm adjuncting at Miami next semester, teaching three sections of Freshman comp. and possible an intro to creative writing course (please god), and until then I'm working and reading. So far I've finished the latest Robert Jordan novel (fantasy), Apology for Want by Mary Jo Bang, A Boy's Will and North of Boston by Robert Frost, Great Books by David Denby, and I can't remember what else, but I'm currently tackling Legacy of Ashes, a history of the CIA. Pretty wild stuff.

We Care

This Spring I watched, No Impact Man, twice. The first time I was just checking out the movie Brett put on the instant que and then a second time because I wanted Brett to see the husband and wife interaction through the whole project. It did get me interested in a compost pile once we have some yard beyond a patio. I have a feeling a pile of our scraps and worms would gross the neighbors out! I did think that it looked fun to make your own household cleaners. I honestly have no idea what borax is but may be looking more into it once my Costco bins of bleach wipes are gone. Actually now that I am writing this out maybe I should make some while I still have my Costco bleach wipes in case I botch the whole thing!

Then in April my first grade class began a unit titled: We Care. The class learned all about recycling, reusing, and reducing. They brought in items from home they could reuse and we looked at a massive picture book filled with pictures of a landfill, pollution, and how items like cans are recycled. The students brought in a graph of items they recycled or could recycle at home.

I feel like I'm a person who recycles because we used to recycle at home growing up. However, I am four years out of college and we have not been recycling, at all. I felt like a bit of a fraud turning the pages of the gigantic picture book of landfills. (Really I need no reminder, I drive past Rumpe dump everyday.) So I looked into some options. I discovered that right behind the campus police station are bins where we can put our plastic, cardboard, cans, and glass for recycling. Three trips and counting! It's a start.